Galaxy of Horrors Page #4

number three.

Voiceover:
You might

think consciousness is

pretty well our starting point.

It's the thing we know best

because all of us are surrounded

by our consciousness.

I mean we have

100 billion neurons

in our head interacting

like a giant computer,

processing inputs,

producing outputs.

We know we're not

just giant robots.

We actually have subjective

conscious experience inside.

There's something it

feels like to be me.

I quite like the idea

that somehow information

by its very nature

has two aspects.

There's a physical aspect

that you might find

in computers and in the brain.

But there's also a subjective

or experiential side

of information and

that's what we find

in consciousness.

Handyman:
Hey.

Knock it off.

Voiceover:
Complex information

processing like

in a human, complex

consciousness.

Simple information processing

like you might find

in an earthworm, then

simpler consciousness.

Any amount of information

processing gives you

some degree of consciousness.

Even a molecule or

a particle has a very

small amount of

information processing.

So I at least don't

rule out the idea that

there's some basic

kind of consciousness

all the way down.

Male 1:
Dammit.

Male 2:
You're gonna

miss? Male 1:
Shut up.

- Male 2:
You're gonna miss.

- Male 1:
Dammit.

Male 2:
Let me try.

Male 1:
You're too drunk.

Male 2:
Come on.

Look.

Male 1:
Here p*ssy,

p*ssy, p*ssy, p*ssy.

Here p*ssy, p*ssy, p*ssy.

Male 2:
No way. Male 1: Shhh.

Male 2:
Killing a

dude's cat is cold.

I hate that weirdo.

Let's get some more beer.

At least one human

is conscious,

and I tend to suppose that

other humans are conscious too,

but then how far does it extend?

Are apes conscious?

Are mice conscious?

Are flies conscious?

It is very natural for

us to recognize

consciousness in certain animals

anything with eyes for example.

It's almost irresistible to

attribute consciousness to it.

There it is. It's looking at us.

I can see the spark

behind its eyes.

We don't get much in the

way of empathy for insects.

We can imagine being

confronted with a fly

that was blown up to human size.

Now this might be kind

of scary and kind of weird,

but at the same time

probably looking directly

into that fly's eyes it

might be hard not to see it

as part of the circle

of moral concern.

If it ever came the day

where we saw

a fly's perspective and

see what it's like

to be a fly from

the fly's perspective

mainlining the fly's

consciousness.

It might be hard from

that moment on

to just SWAT flies as

casually as we do right now.

What matters here, is

it the squishy human biology

or is it something

more like the organization,

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